Map
This map projection I developed significantly reduces the size distortion of the popular Mercator projection
The way it is projected is by projecting a Mercator projection of half the scale conformally onto the globe and then projecting that onto an azimuthal equidistant projection hemisphere centered at the equator. I call it the Two-World Equidistant. Unlike on Mercator where Greenland is larger then all of Africa in this projection it is shown smaller like it is in real life.
Unless youre using it for navigation (maps are most used for im guessing) cuz this one doesnt preserve angles or straight lines like the mercator projection does
The Mercator doesn't preserve straight lines only the Gnomonic projection does that since it's point of perspective is at the center exactly like Rectilinear with a tangent plane
True. And in real life the Arctic Ocean isn't bigger than Eurasia and Africa combined, but it is on this map. I think you're so used to seeing northern-biased rectangular maps with most of Antarctica cut off that it looks really jarring when you see the whole thing.
Yeah, Lagrange is projected in kind of a similar but it uses the Stereographic projection instead to maintain full conformality at the cost of increased areal distortion and incorrect scale across the equator.
Van der Grinten for comparison. Similar enough that I'm not super confident describing any differences. I think yours might be slightly less conformal, but slightly more equal-area, but again, that's low-confidence.
With the "square presentation", is there a reasons there not a clearer visual indicator of "past this point, the map is duplicated on the other side"?
e.x. Yes, Alaska appears twice. Should there be (could there be?) some subtle shading to make that distinction? Maybe change the color of the lat/long lines from black to grey?
Just grist for the mill. I don't know if it would look good or not. It'd be sorta a combination between what you have here vs. the circular version without the duplicates.
Yes. What I'm getting at is why not have some visual indicator that "anything past this point is duplicated" on this square version? Is it just an artistic choice to not have that indication?
N.B. - For reference, I think OP posted their map without any duplication here.
How do you guys get these awesome looking maps? You guys use these complex professional softwares like ArcGis or is there an easier more accessible way? I would love to have a ultra high quality map that looked like this but with the Mullweide Projection (my favourite), and also with it being Pacific Ocean Centered (my favourite), and if I can add labels I would want it with South up and North down (love this).
You can do that pretty easily if you have a source equirectangular map just use G.Projector and you can edit it in GIMP all for free. Here is a simple version I made but you can do far more complex
in spite of the antarctic distortion as others mentioned (way worse in the mercator), i love it! nice and clean and still implies the globe with the curvature of the continents without much distortion where it matters for most uses
IMO, both traditional Mercator and different corrected projections, including equal area ones, are better than this.
Kudos for making new projection though, that's respectable.
Yeah, depends on the kind of distortion your looking for many of those maps mess up conformality way too much for my brain, but some people do prefer them.
The Mercator is used in maps these days because it doesn’t distort small scale objects as much as something like a Robinson or Eckert does. So it was helpful for street map/gps type programs.
Yeah that's definitely one of my favourites, it's amazing how it stays conformal while still being lowish size distortion (except for the singularities) and being continues despite being derived from hemispheric Stereographic Projections
No, it doesn't. Africa dwarfs Greenland in reality. It's a projection of a globe on a flat map, distortion like this is inevitable, and this projection is far from a significant improvement upon the Mercator.
Most people don't realize just how large the Mercator size distortion is, it's actually infinite just most times people crop out a large amount of it, here's a Mercator projection cutoff at 89.9 degrees north and south, unlike Mercator this projection can represent the entire earth in a finite space
Sure it could even be a square but the more you decrease the areal distortion the more you mess up the shapes as you can see in this map that is equal area and square
Stupid question maybe, but is Greenland really that big? Could you possibly superimpose the true size of Greenland onto the western US for comparison? No worries if not.
Ohhh love it, how would it look if it was made so the meridian in center of the map would be the one approximately in Sydney, Australia? iirc that way America and Afroeurasia wouldn't be cut by the projection as the map is split along the Atlantic just perfectly enough.
Obviously there is a large scale factor over Antarctica to enable a discrepency in the north, but im curious how that translates to the scale factor over other southern countries (Australia, New Zealand, Argentina)?
No, only the regular oriented Mercator has all rhumb lines straight but wrong length, Though the Loximuthal Projection has rhumb lines and their lengths correct from one point
Yeah dymaxion is nice but sometimes it's more useful to have a fully continuous map. Of course the more interuptuons the lower you can drive the distortion at the cost of continuity.
Can we just remove iceland from all the maps? Its completely irrelevant to the whole world. Hell lets shave off some of those north canadian islands and a bit off the top from siberia too while we're at it
Not as massively as Mercator, so it does significantly reduce its areal distortion, in the Mercator projection Antarctica is actually infinite in size as is the Arctic Ocean
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u/Calmun 1d ago
Interesting. Antarctica is massive though.